Schizophrenia Affects Your Body, Not Just Your Brain

Wow, it's almost like the brain is just another part of the body, potentially affected by other parts of the body.

http://neurosciencenews.com/schizophrenia-body-brain-9036/

 

Among the assorted hit-and-miss diagnoses my mother had over many years, schizophrenia was one of them. I think it very possible there could be an underlying physical abnormality that leads to brain malfunction, thereby manifesting as a mental illness. Whether such a physical problem would be confined only to the brain ... who knows? From my second hand experience of it, the very last people to ask would be psychiatrists.

 

The possibility that any psychological condition is caused by physical issues is not something that psychiatrists are going to be keen on, as it will start to reduce their potential victim pool.

 

It is part of the body and ofcourse it is affected by other parts.

Did ypu ever think the brain could live without the rest of the body?

 

The sarcasm isn't apparent? If not, please take my post as being a sarcastic shot at the psychs.

 

"victim pool" what an appropriate term!

 

And yet even back in the '60s my parents apparently understood that my mother's problems potentially had some physical root cause. "Chemical imbalance" was a term I vaguely recall. I have very mixed feelings about psychiatry. On the one hand I know for sure there are some immensely dedicated and compassionate psychiatrists and psychologists, who do indeed help people a lot. And yet even before my ME-awareness, based on other experiences, I've also felt psychiatry a bit akin to voodoo and black magic, practiced by people having much more faith than knowledge. Very mixed feelings.

 

The sarcasm was noted and appreciated by me!

I think this paper was really interesting @Andy, thanks for posting about it. You can find the full thing here: http://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41380-018-0058-9. Here is the interesting bit:

So in other words, people diagnosed after their first episode of psychosis, who'd had no antipsychotics, had significantly elevated levels of four cytokines: IL-1β, sIL2R, IL-6, and TNFα.

I've been wondering for a while if the brain is a sort of "canary" for some sorts of systemic disturbances, the first to show external signs of disease.

But what's the bet all this will end up getting explained away as an effect of having the stress of psychosis, rather than an important potential causal factor?

 

So immune system activation and, unsurprisingly enough, a quick Google reveals most, if not all, of those cytokines are involved in inflammation. My prediction is that, given enough time, we will find most, if not all, "mental illnesses" are physical illnesses that just affect the brain in certain ways more than others - treat the physical and the mental will improve..

 

The new thing in depression is that it's caused by inflammation, not serotonin imbalance! I read a fascinating article in The Times a couple of weeks ago. Too brain dead to find it. Cambridge psychiatrist has written a book on it.

 

I think this might be the one @ Squeezy ?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ical-profession-is-failing-patients-cgd08lbv6

You have to register to see the whole thing though.

Also by Daily Mail journalist:

https://www.blogpvan.org/main/cambr...actually-caused-by-inflammation-in-the-brain/

On amazon:

 

That's the one. Smashing find @Invisible Woman 

 

Yea, Ed Bullmore. Amazing how many people are shoehorning it into a psychosocial account of depression, though. Its all that negative thinking that causes the immune dysfunction.

 

Maybe explains how high dose B3 ( niacin) helped treat schizophrenia prior to antipsychotics - it has anti inflammatory properties.